Blogs

We recently conducted a highly enlightening webinar with Storage Switzerland on the topic of storage refresh best practices, and in case you missed it, we’re sharing the key takeaways that you can start applying today for immediate gains in efficiency, risk reduction, and cost savings.

Storage Switzerland’s founder and leading analyst in the storage community, George Crump, joined our principal systems engineer and technical evangelist, Peter Murray, to lay out a five-step, best practices framework for successfully executing a storage refresh project.

As storage virtualization, hyper convergence and software-defined strategies continue to evolve, enterprise storage refreshes nowadays are radically different than they were just a few years ago. Back then, typical refreshes took place roughly every three years—driven by quantifiable need for expanding capacity and overprovisioning in order to effectively ensure performance. Fast forward to today, and storage refreshes tend to be a frequent, almost perpetual initiative—characterized by constant change, compounded complexity and relentless demands for higher performance, lower costs and minimal risks. As a result, storage administrators must practice a constant state of readiness to adapt to changes and manage risks while upgrading and modernizing their storage deployments in perpetuity.

And with that, here are the five key steps for successfully executing storage refreshes:

Production Management: Determine how to assure performance and rapidly resolve inevitable problems.

Change Impact Analysis: Determine how future changes and updates will impact performance before deploying into production.

The benefits of following these five steps are numerous and irrefutable, and when executed properly, these best practices lead to reduced risk; a clean break from over-provisioning cycles; faster deployment; future-proofed decisions; and improved team productivity.

The webinar is full to the brim with pragmatic and actionable insights from George and Peter on how to approach each of the five steps to success. We highly recommend you dive in to learn more about how you can start your storage refresh journey today. To watch a replay of the webinar, please visit: http://go.virtualinstruments.com/storage-swiss-ldx-od-replay-request.html